Marriage and disease : being an abridged edition of Hèalth and disease in relation to marriage and the married state / edited by H. Senator and S. Kaminer ; translated from the German by J. Dulberg.

  • Hermann Senator
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Marriage and disease : being an abridged edition of Hèalth and disease in relation to marriage and the married state / edited by H. Senator and S. Kaminer ; translated from the German by J. Dulberg. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    peo])les in the Indian Archipelago, etc., and the severe punish- ment of incest. It would be, however, very difficult to prove that exogamy was nothing eise but a reform measure intended to put an end to marriages between blood relations when it was found that they have injurious consequences. It probably originated mainly as a result of the oldest condition of society and of the family (connnunal niarriage, polyandry, marriage with the brother's widow, scarcity of women among some tribes, etc.). The matriarchate associated with such a primitive family System would even frustrate the intention to eliminate con- sanguineous marriages, for half-brothers and half-sisters on the father's side would be able to marry each other, being of different tribes. As a matter of fact, this kind of marriage is seen in different nations, even in such as have already discarded exogamy, or restricted it to portions of tribes ; among the Howas, for instance, brothers and sisters may marry each other, but they must not have the same mother. Rut it would mean going too farwere we to deny altogether that an empirically gained conviction of the injuriousness of consanguineous marriages played here any part. Thus the Arabs are perfectly familiär with this tlieory of injuriousness. A saying of the Haditt—the sacred tradition of the Arabs— runs : 4 Marry from among strangers, so that thou dost not beget a weak offspring.1 Later law-books also give ex- pression to this view, for instance, that of Badjuri, the commentator of the Ibn-Quasim. He says: 4 Whoever wishes to obtain a noble breed must marry from a foreign country, just as one will obtain good fruit from a brauch grafted into a foreign trunk.1 Similarly, marriage with a 4 bint-amm 1 (the daughter of an uncle on the father's side) is also exhorted against. The main reason of the laws enacted by civilized nations against marriage between nearest relatives is probably also not to be found every time in the intention to prevent a degeneration of the species. Legislators, oecumenical
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